“Is there not a way to do without the euphonium player?” [Representative Vic] Snyder asked Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army’s vice chief of staff. “Do we need to really draft an electric bass player, to pull them back in? Is there not a way that we can’t let that kind of thing slide?”

After a laugh in the hearing room, Cody answered with a straight face that the bands have been busy, tending to services and funerals. These days, Cody said, “our bands are being stressed quite a bit.”